Clement Lefebvre has announced that the release candidate for Linux Mint 15 is ready for download and testing: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 15 'Olivia' RC. Linux Mint 15 is the most ambitious release since the start of the project. MATE 1.6 is greatly improved and Cinnamon 1.8 offers a ton of new features, including a screensaver and a unified control center. The login screen can now be themed in HTML 5 and two new tools, 'Software Sources' and 'Driver Manager', make their first appearance in Linux Mint. MDM now features 3 greeters: a GTK+ greeter; a themeable GDM greeter for which hundreds of themes are available; a brand new HTML greeter, also themeable which supports a new generation of animated and interactive themes." See the release announcement, release notes and what's new page for more details, known issues and screenshots. Download (SHA256): linuxmint-15-cinnamon-dvd-64bit-rc.iso (906MB, torrent), linuxmint-15-mate-dvd-64bit-rc.iso (985MB, torrent).

Linux Mint is an Ubuntu-based distribution whose goal is to provide a more complete out-of-the-box experience by including browser plugins, media codecs, support for DVD playback, Java and other components. It also adds a custom desktop and menus, several unique configuration tools, and a web-based package installation interface. Linux Mint is compatible with Ubuntu software repositories.

The Linux Mint team has announced the availability of a new development snapshot. The new version, Linux Mint 18.1 beta, features a new screen saver which allows the user to control the media player while the screen is locked, giving users the ability to control music playback without unlocking their computer. In the Cinnamon edition of Linux Mint it is possible to enable sounds to accompany on-screen notifications and the Xplayer video player can now blank monitors not in use by the player window. "If you have more than one monitor, you can now press the 'Blank Other Monitors' button when playing a video in full screen. Your video will continue to play and all your other monitors will turn black. The blanking can be toggled back and forth and automatically stops if you leave full screen or close the player. This feature is also available if you plug an external monitor to a laptop, so it allows you to blank the external monitor, or to blank the laptop itself without having to close the lid." These and other changes can be found in the release announcements for each edition (Cinnamon, MATE), in the What's New pages (Cinnamon, MATE) and in the release notes (Cinnamon, MATE). Download (pkglist): linuxmint-18.1-cinnamon-64bit-beta.iso (1,703MB, SHA256, signature, torrent), linuxmint-18.1-mate-64bit-beta.iso (1,783MB, SHA256, signature, torrent).

Clement Lefebvre has announced the release of Linux Mint 18 "KDE", an edition of the Mint family featuring the KDE Plasma 5.6 desktop: "The team is proud to announce the release of Linux Mint 18 'Sarah' KDE edition. Linux Mint 18 is a long-term support release which will be supported until 2021. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use. This edition of Linux Mint features the KDE Plasma 5.6 desktop environment. The default display manager is SDDM. The APT sources include the Kubuntu backports PPA, which provides updates to newer versions of the Plasma desktop. The update manager received many improvements, both visual and under the hood. The main screen and the preferences screen now use stack widgets and subtle animations, and better support was given to alternative themes." Here is the brief release announcement, with further details, screenshots and videos provided in the new features page as well as the release notes. Download: linuxmint-18-kde-64bit.iso (1,622MB, SHA256, signature, torrent).

Clement Lefebvre has announced the availability of Linux Mint 18 "Xfce" edition. Linux Mint 18 is a long term support release which will receive security updates through to the year 2021. The Xfce edition is a lightweight alternative to Linux Mint's Cinnamon and MATE editions. The new release offers users access to Mint's X-Apps, forks of GNOME applications which are designed to look and work the same across multiple desktop environments. The new version of Mint also features improvements to the update manager: "Linux Mint no longer ships lists of fixes and lists of regressions specific to particular kernels. With so many kernel revisions, so many fixes and so many regressions happening sometimes on a daily basis, this information was quickly outdated. Instead, it was replaced with links to relevant sources of information. For instance, if you select a particular kernel you can now quickly access its changelog and see all the bug reports marked against it. The update manager was already configurable but it wasn't clear how to configure it, and why. In particular, the concepts of regressions, stability and security weren't clearly explained." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement and release notes. Download: linuxmint-18-xfce-64bit.iso (1,622MB, SHA256, signature, torrent, pkglist).

Clement Lefebvre has announced a new release of Linux Mint. The new version, Linux Mint 18, is a long term support release which will receive support through to the year 2021. This release is based on Ubuntu 16.04 and is available in Cinnamon and MATE editions. There are several new features in this version, including an enhanced update manager which supports installing different versions of the Linux kernel. The update manager will also be easier to configure to offer a balance between security and stability. Linux Mint 18 further introduces X-Apps. "A new project called X-Apps was started and its goal is to produce generic applications for traditional GTK+ desktop environments. The idea behind this project is to replace applications which no longer integrate properly outside of a particular environment (this is the case for a growing number of GNOME applications)." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement (Cinnamon, MATE) and release notes (Cinnamon, MATE). Download (pkglist): linuxmint-18-cinnamon-64bit.iso (1,619MB, SHA256, torrent, signature), linuxmint-18-mate-64bit.iso (1,698MB, SHA256, torrent, signature).

Clement Lefebvre has announced a development release of the Linux Mint distribution. The new testing release, Linux Mint 18 Beta, is available in Cinnamon and MATE editions. There are several new features being previewed in this beta, including an enhanced update manager which supports installing different versions of the Linux kernel. The update manager will also be easier to configure to offer a balance between security and stability. This beta also introduces X-Apps: A new project called X-Apps was started and its goal is to produce generic applications for traditional GTK desktop environments. The idea behind this project is to replace applications which no longer integrate properly outside of a particular environment (this is the case for a growing number of GNOME applications) and to give our desktop environments the same set of core applications, so that each change, each new feature being developed, each little improvement made in one of them will benefit not just one environment, but all of them." Additional information can be found in the project's release announcement (Cinnamon, MATE) and release notes (Cinnamon, MATE). Download (pkglist): linuxmint-18-cinnamon-64bit-beta.iso (1,619MB, SHA256, signature), linuxmint-18-mate-64bit-beta.iso (1,700MB, SHA256, signature).

The Linux Mint team has announced the availability of two new community releases. The new editions, "KDE" and "Xfce", are community spins of Linux Mint 17.3 and feature the same enhancements to the distribution's update manager and driver manager. The new community editions are based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and will continue to receive security updates through to 2019. "Linux Mint 17.3 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2019. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop even more comfortable to use." Linux Mint 17.3 supports booting on computers with UEFI enabled, but does not support SecureBoot, the project recommends disabling SecureBoot prior to attempting to install Linux Mint. Further information can be found in the project's release announcements for the KDE and Xfce editions. Download: linuxmint-17.3-xfce-64bit.iso (1,483MB, SHA256, torrent, release notes, pkglist), linuxmint-17.3-kde-64bit.iso (1,664MB, SHA256, torrent, release notes, pkglist).

Clement Lefebvre has announced a new release of the Linux Mint distribution. The new release, Linux Mint 17.3, is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and is available in MATE and Cinnamon editions. Some of the key changes in this release involve the handling of software updates and managing hardware drivers. "Linux Mint 17.3 is a long term support release which will be supported until 2019. It comes with updated software and brings refinements and many new features to make your desktop experience more comfortable to use. Software repositories are very important. We use them all the time when installing new software or performing updates. They need to be fast and reliable. This was a major point of focus in the development of Linux Mint 17.3. Software repositories are mirrored (i.e. duplicated on many servers) all over the world. The main goal of the Software Sources configuration tool is to make it easy to find the best available mirror for you; one that is: reliable and fully up to date; fast and responsive. To find the fastest mirrors, the Software Sources tool now detects your location and starts its speed tests with mirrors near you." Further information can be found in the release announcements for the Cinnamon and MATE editions. Download (pkglist): linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso (1,508MB, SHA256, torrent), linuxmint-17.3-mate-64bit.iso (1,600MB, SHA256, torrent).

Clement Lefebvre has announced the availability of a new beta release for the Linux Mint distribution. The new version, Linux Mint 17.3 Beta, is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and contains mostly bug fixes and performance enhancements. The Driver Manager now reports installation errors and indicates whether available drivers are open source or not. The Update Manager attempts to locate fast mirrors to improve download times and multi-monitor support has been improved for the MATE desktop. It is also now possible to switch window managers on the fly from the MATE desktop. "In preparation for Linux Mint 17.3, a lot of work went into MATE 1.12. Most of the papercut issues identified in Linux Mint 17.2 were fixed and some of the new features implemented in Cinnamon were ported to MATE. The team focused on many little yet important issues which are key for a comfortable user experience. MATE is now using the same `presence' interface as GNOME and Cinnamon. This means it now supports a very wide range of applications." The release notes for the beta are available in two separate posts for the Cinnamon and MATE editions. Download (pkglist): linuxmint-17.3-cinnamon-64bit-beta.iso (1,508MB, torrent, release notes), linuxmint-17.3-mate-64bit-beta.iso (1,600MB, torrent, release notes).

Linux Mint is a desktop oriented distribution based on Ubuntu. Clement Lefebvre has announced two new editions to the Linux Mint 17.2 family which feature the KDE and Xfce desktop environments, respectively. The new KDE and Xfce editions ship with a more flexible Software Sources manager, improved UEFI support and the ability to alias packages in the Update Manager. There are a number of other miscellaneous improvements: "The USB Image Writer and the USB Stick Formatter now recognize a wider variety of USB sticks. They also feature improvements in terms of partitions alignment, boot flags. Sticks are better described and the tools also now use less CPU than they did before. LibreOffice was upgraded to version 4.4.3. HPLIP was upgraded to version 3.15.2, for more HP printers to be recognized and supported. HAL was reintroduced to support DRM playback in Adobe Flash (note that this helps with certain video websites, but not all of them, a tutorial was written to workaround other DRM/Flash issues). In the repositories, Inkscape was upgraded to version 0.91." Further information can be found in the release announcements (KDE, Xfce) and in the release notes (KDE, Xfce). Download: linuxmint-17.2-kde-64bit.iso (1,714MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist), linuxmint-17.2-xfce-64bit.iso (1,530MB, MD5, torrent, pkglist).

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